Emperor Cookbook - Napoleon!!

[Kbo]

Haha...great. Really shows how long ive been playing the game for. Suppose ill wait around until you guys finish playing the round!

 

[Gumbolt]

ooh shiny. Is it OK if I join in for round 2?

Join the round PNP.

The round is open to any player that wants to take the gauntlet.

Kbo yes you are meant to use Steve save this round!!!

 

[Lenowill]

I'm joining in and have played from Steve's save up through 400 A.D. Gonna have to sleep before I make my post though.

Good luck all!

Edit: Okay, here's mine ...

Spoiler :

Pretty happy with how this turned out. Researched Myst-->Medi-->Priesthood-->Code of Laws, was surprised to get a religion and chose to found Confucianism which was then founded in Orleans. Got a Great Merchant and bulbed Metal Casting (wanted a Great Prophet but it was a luck shot and didn't happen). Mao and Willem share our state religion and Julius has open borders and could easily be converted using a missionary. 2 turns from having Civil Service, tech traded to parity with all currently known civs, and have Metal Casting, a very useful tech which none of them yet have. Currently attempting to snag the Collossus our Capital.

The first thing I did, after chopping the GLH and whipping an extra warrior to fend off a heartbreaking invasion by a single barbarian Spearman that threatened to make us lose a town, was to make a galley and a settler in our northernmost cities and colonized the island for the yummy overseas trade routes. Made two more settlers and colonized the eastern side of the island along with settling Marseilles on the mainland.

I chopped pretty hard on our capital and Lyons, shrugging off the unhealthiness in the name of getting more of an early production advantage. In the forests' place, I made mines and cottages. I chose to cottage the silk in the capital's BFC since it will lead to larger overall commerce in the end for Bureau goodness through the mid-game. Current civics of note are Caste System (which helped me pop borders on most of these new towns) and Organized Religion (which with our Org trait gives us a yummy +25% building production almost everywhere while remaining practical on cost).

We have a spare settler made and ready to build a city to work the banana, incense, and two hills once the plantation is finished and a road has been built to connect that tile to our river for trade routing. There's also another settler on the way with the intent of settling by the Marble for a modest but still probably worthwhile little city. However that settler could also be saved for the astronomy era if needed.

I happened to have an archer and chariot parked next to the barbarian city down south when Mao tried unsuccessfully to capture it, so I finished it off before the archer could promote, and razed the city and used the plunder to fund more research.

Other Considerations:

--Two turns ago or so, I refused to give Metal Casting to Julius in tribute. Given that we have no copper or iron (although we have ivory!) and no Feudalism yet, upgrading our military soon may be a priority. We also might be able to stave off a DoW by converting Julius to Confucianism. On the plus side, Julius seems to be relatively far away compared to the other two.

--Orleans' citizens are not currently automated at all due to an accident on my part, and is running two Scientist specialists with the goal of getting a GSci with which to bulb part of the way through Education for the lib race. However, switching to a priest and an engineer (which is what the game wants to do if I turn citizen automation back on) might be better in some senses, in hopes of getting ourselves a "Great Profit" soon in order to take advantage of our rampantly spreading Confucian religion. With the Holy City and a Market we could probably run much closer to 100% on the slider.

--Philosophy is most of the way researched already, which will help out in the Lib race and gives us an option to finish researching it quickly for trading fodder if necessary. I started researching it it but jumped off it in favor of CS once I saw the sixth religion get founded. Someone overseas got it--no one on our continent but us cares a lick about founding religions, it seems.

--We have tons of happiness and not enough food, pretty much everywhere, so Hereditary Rule hasn't been needed yet.

--Once again, our military is laughable and we don't even own a barracks. That's going to need addressing. War Elephants (Construction and HBR) and/or Longbows (Feud) are some good options.

--I was planning on changing the two grassland mines next to Rheims into windmills once we have Machinery (or maybe a little later), in order to help the city keep growing slowly but steadily. Not sure what to do with the forests there, possibly cottage most of it, but food is scarce and there's no grassland flatlands to be had there.

--Another worker or two would be nice to have. Lyons for instance is suffering from a bit of unimproved land, although the worker who just made the gold mine to the southeast can come right back up and get to work on Lyons.

--GLH rocks!

--When in doubt, Cottage!

Click here for my screenshots:

http://www.projecthowler.com/civ4ad400EmpCookNap.html

And here's my savegame:

http://www.projecthowler.com/civ4savegames/Lenowill Napoloen Cookbook AD-0400.CivBeyondSwordSave

Let me know if there's any download problems.

 

[kossin]

kossin Emperor Cookbook 1 - Napoleon - to 400AD

Spoiler :

Chopped two more forests into the GLH then let it build itself until 3-pop whip in 1350BC. Open borders bring in goodies! Turned research off until library was built.
WvO founded Taoism in 650 BC and I converted shortly after. As a matter of fact, the whole continent is Taoist.

Research went Writing>Myst>Alphabet>IW+Hunting(trade)>Currency>HBR>Archery>Mathematics>Poly+gold(trade)>Priesthood(beg)>Construction>CoL+Monarchy(trade)>Mono+gold(trade)>CS>Calendar(trade)>Paper(1 turn)

Begged continuously to keep slider at max.

Had trouble with a nasty barb spearman, had to whip 2 warriors in Lyon
Also lost a chariot to a barb axe when scouting (hadn't seen him).
Had some trouble with barb galleys so I built several of my own. Luckily I didn't get a single net pillaged!
First GP was a GM settled in Paris even though I'd been running 2 scientists. Thankfully the second was a GS who proceeded to make an Academy. As expected, turned research off 8 turns before the Academy for brownie-bonus research.

Settled on the island to the north, but couldn't get a second city up because of barbs
Moreover, JC has a stack roaming in the east empire.

I actually asked for gold to force peace 10 turns as I was massing the army south. He went WHEOOH before he turned Friendly sadly. I'm kinda worried about this so I moved my Mao-army towards the eastern part to ward him off.
Mao built a stupid city to claim the marble ...

... and he has a lot of good land available.

Moreover we need it to chain irrigate our cities

I only have 5 workers, but then again the land is ok-improved, combined with the fact that I've been whipping a lot. We might need more soon, depending on war.

Demos - someone has a good GNP

Graphs - but it isn't someone we know

Known world

Empire - middle

Empire - south

Empire - north

Overview

Military Advisor

Stats

Techs

War seems inevitable as our basic land sucks. I would go through a lot of whipping/drafting possibly. Domination/Conquest seem like more plausible VCs.

 

[dirtyparrot]

Haha...great. Really shows how long ive been playing the game for. Suppose ill wait around until you guys finish playing the round!

I don't think that there is anything wrong in playing this round from the correct save. Sure, you might have a slight advantage, but I don't think that it's something that most of us would object to.

 

[kossin]

I don't think that there is anything wrong in playing this round from the correct save. Sure, you might have a slight advantage, but I don't think that it's something that most of us would object to.

Agree. It's fine by me.

 

[Lenowill]

Fine by me also.

And Kossin,

Spoiler :

Drat, I knew I should have gone for CS before trying to get Philosophy. xD Oh well ... I guess between our saves it's a tossup between having a military ready to go to war versus having a Holy City in the works in our own lands and being able to possibly go for a peaceful game + culture pushing against Mao. We're close to equally far along the path to Lib due to the beakers I've got in Philo, and I got a fogbust up to the island fast enough to avoid being settled-on by the barbarians that seem to be plaguing others up there. Tough call, I'll be ranking your game highly in the voting though unless someone else devastates us both.

 

[kossin]

@Lenowill

Spoiler :

Just had a look on your save. The island up north looks great. Seems like you left the governor make some decisions though! (Working unimproved tiles while in Caste, running a Spy Specialist, not working the silver, etc.
JC is also WHEOOH, Cautious to you and Pleased to WvO and Mao in your game so I do hope he doesn't have you in mind. He could be going for a barb city actually (as in my game). Good gamble though, GLH+Colossus makes water tiles pretty strong before Democracy (Emancipation)

 

[Lenowill]

@Kossin

Spoiler :

I was manually working the Silver for a long time but auto'd it a short while ago to let the town grow some. Sounds like that may need looking at again.

How can you check if someone is WHEOOH and what exactly does that acronym stand for? (I know it basically means they've decided to attack someone/something.)

If he does have us in mind, a quick tech-up to War Elephants should still give us time to fix things, but yeah, I would rather that not be the case.

However the likelihood that he's after me is at least somewhat high, since I just refused him tribute. That's part of the reason I was wanting to get him religiously converted soon (to help with Diplo all around).

On the other hand, if Julius DoWs, he'll be getting You Declared War on Our Friend penalties, which we may be able to use to our advantage later on, as it might knock him out of Pleased with the others considering he isn't a Confucian yet.

 

[kossin]

@Lenowill

Spoiler :

We Have Enough On Our Hands (Right Now)

Like this, or in the bottom right corner using the BUG mod.
It means he's preparing for war and it's inevitable unless you grow beyond his max power ratio (Which I don't remember, but it's >1.3)

The governor usually isn't a great idea from my experience, although I tend to use it when I'm:
1) lazy
2) certain of the city-specialization (ex. commerce)

Either way, you should investigate your cities every time they grow and when happiness changes.

Edit: just found it here

JULIUS_CAESAR
<iMaxWarRand>100
<iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio>110
<iMaxWarDistantPowerRatio>80
<iMaxWarMinAdjacentLandPercent>1
<iLimitedWarRand>100
<iLimitedWarPowerRatio>100
<iDogpileWarRand>50

 

[Lenowill]

@Kossin

Spoiler :

For some reason the game wouldn't let me use BUG Mod when loading the Steve save file that was posted by Gumbolt. I like the BUG a lot because it lets me keep track of city growth and culture and trade opportunities much more conveniently than the regular interface does, but I did not realize it could be used with this game we are playing. How do you get it to work, if you have time to explain?

I should probably micromanage my cities more than I do. My problem usually is that I micromanage my city in one direction and then forget to change it, and so I end up using it worse than even the Governor would in the long run. It is one of the areas I need to work on in my gameplay.

As for Julius, that does not look good. In the event my game gets picked I will be grabbing some military techs and units as soon as Civil Service is done. Forge access and Civil Service should give me enough of a production advantage that he can't support the war long-term, assuming that I am even his target. Thank you for the information.

 

[kossin]

@Lenowill

Spoiler :

Have you installed BUG in Custom Assets or as a stand-alone mod? If as a stand-alone mod then that's why it doesn't work, I think. You can uninstall and re-install it in Custom Assets.
Otherwise sometimes it just glitches, try loading the game a few more times.

For micromanagement: You don't have to check every turn in general (unless playing a SG or Deity ). But if you put a city to stagnation, then you might want to check it more often/when you improve land/acquire resources. It's a habit I'm trying to improve as well

From your save, it depends how much time we'd have before a DoW. Given enough time, forges would certainly help. I fear, since we have no metals, that trading for Construction would be a better choice though (Catapults)

 

[Lenowill]

@Kossin

Spoiler :

Aye. I mainly was thinking of the Capital city which already has a forge and is going to be at 175% production (200% for buildings) as soon as CS finishes. I'm not above putting the Colossus on hold and taking a Gold profit on it later when someone else finishes it, if necessary, in order to build enough units to beat Caesar back. My expectation would be for him to come from the east (through WvO) although I can't know that for sure.

We might have to trade for Construction if possible, as you say, and probably manually research Horseback Riding.

Very interesting game.

And yes, I installed BUG as a standalone mod (option #3 on the installation menu). That's probably why it isn't working properly for this. I'll see about reinstalling it before we continue. Thanks again.

 

[Teelman]

Ok Ill show you the empire first then comment.

Spoiler :

The capital

The tech tree: I researched myst/alpha/curr/col/CS/HBR. I was able to trade writing/alpha for hunting/archery/med/PH/IW. I traded curr for Mon and some gold. I traded CS for Calender/MC (dont know if that was wise but we will see).

Stats:

My goal was to REX as much as possible. My first city was the blocker to the east on the golf/oasis/clams. Then I expand south from Orleans. Bulgar was a barb city that I took. I also put some effort into expanding to the north island for the happiness and health resources which we are sorely lacking. I already have another settler coming in a few turns for my second city on the northern island

I sent my GM on a trade mission and banked 1500 gold. Which, I am doing some 100% research to help the tech rate. I can research Philo in 5 turns and Paper in 7 with enough gold to run about 25 turns at 100% for a run at LIB. I have my first GS coming in 13 turns which can be used to either bulb rest of education (might be able to finish most of it with rest of 100% research) or plop an academy in capital. I also should have another GS coming from orleans in 20+ turns.

I already have another settler coming in a few turns for my second city on the northern island. Also I roaded to all the surrounding civs to get the other civ trade routes going. However, I am really concerned with both lack of copper/iron though. I researched HBR to start on some HA's to try and get my power rating up because I am pretty weak now. However, everyone is at pleased but I think JC will declare at pleased (I think). Also, there is not any religion on the continent yet, which is a little wierd. For military, I guess tech Constr. for elephants/cats and feud for longbows would the most logical solution from here. ALso, I didnt worry about any going for any wonders

 

[Gumbolt]

I suspect a lot of the map was already revealed by other games. Its likely his first game would of differed from Steves game anyway.

I would remind everyone to play from the save provided in the results. Were using Steve250 save.

 

[Jumbled]

1500 BC – 400 AD

Spoiler :

Finishing off TGL put me in a strong financial position, and I opted to tech Alphabet immediately after Writing which put me in a fairly secure tech position compared to the AIs. I then decided to grab MC early and built the Colossus in Paris, as another nice complement to all these coastal cities. Settled the (well-resourced) island to the north, but didn’t expand particularly hard on the mainland. IW revealed that we lacked any metal, which could make life tricky. However, WvO has a couple of iron nodes, including one near the coast which we may even be able to grab with a cunning settler if we’re quick. I only wish I’d scouted that area a little sooner.

As it stands, the sensible move looks to be an attack on Mao as soon as we can build a force capable of doing so.

 

[Steve250]

Spoiler :

Stage 2, lots of rexxing. First things first however, some screen shots.

Finished the GLH in Paris and then started spamming settlers to block Mao and get the gold site. After that it was mainly backfilling and getting a settler to the north island while teching towards Literature. Settled a GM in Paris and finished the Glib at around 250AD.

Wilhelm managed to get to CoL first and spread it around, although not before Ceasar declared on Mao. This turned out to be very nice for me, as I think Mao may well of been going to try and go for me and repelling him with no iron/copper would of been a pain. Tech situation is ok although Willie is flying atm, could perhaps go for a Phants/cat war against Mao. Heading towards music for the free GA atm.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

I've never done Emperor Cookbook before, but I'd like to give it a try:

Spoiler :

I tech Myst first, because it is time to expand and I will need monuments to pop borders. I also have a misguided notion that it is not too late to get the Oracle, but some wonderspammer on another continent disabused me of that notion, thankfully before I even started on priesthood. I think whoever did it pulled a CoL slingshot because Confucianism was founded the same turn, though with "pick religions" on it could just be a coincidence. Fortunately I had only just finished meditation and hadn't wasted any turns on Priesthood yet.

I sent out both the chariots in the save to find the trade routes that would make me rich with the GLH. I had a close call with a barb warrior and an undefended city, but Orleans was still working unimproved tiles so I whipped a quick chariot and everything turned out OK. When I meet Caesar I notice that Napoleon is misspelled.

The chariots quickly explore the whole continent. My trade routes are maxed out with the Dutch pretty quickly, but I find out I have to either take out a coastal barb city or build a really long road to hook up Mao, so I start building chariots.

I tech Aesthetics for trade fodder after my ill advised foray into meditation. I plan to wait for someone to pick up alphabet and then trade around. Taoism is founded on another continent, which I have to assume corresponds to Theology. I figure if my game is gonna stand out I am going to have to take some risks so I decide to beeline philosophy to found a religion and *crosses fingers* have the only one on the continent. I already have meditation, after all. I go the drama route, because if I get the monopoly religion I want my second GP to be a Prophet of profit, so no GL. Not sure where I'd put it any way. Irrigation is going to be a problem so I don't know where I am going to put my GP farm. Perhaps wait for Biology and make a national park GP farm on the northern island? Those can be sick, but that's a long time to wait.

While pursuing philosophy Willem pops Alphabet and I am able to trade around for important techs. He gives me hunting for free cause I am a swell guy. I wait a turn so I can get archery as well. With a combination of Athstetics, Alphabet and Meditation, I trade for Archery, Alphabet, IW, Polytheism, Preisthood and Mathematics. Not bad at all. I check reference tables and see that both Mao and Caesar have low WFYABTA thresholds, so I need to watch that. Several people have Monarchy but I can't seem to get it yet. I don't sweat it as my happy cap is OK for now. I notice, as all of you probably have by now, that France has no Iron and no reasonable prospects of getting any. Bummer. Fortunately access to ivory means we can trade for Construction and build Phants and cats in a pinch (need to get HBR, too, but thats cheap). I hope it won't come to that. I don't even really have a dedicated production city yet. Paris and Orleans wind up doing most of the heavy lifting on chariot and archer production between other jobs. I get a Merchant in Paris despite running scientists, but it is OK because he can bulb currency. I stop running specialist there until I can do priests. The free trade routes super-power my commerce putting me on track to get Philo first.

I'm expanding while all this is going on, grabbing one south of Orleans to grab the fish and cows, ignoring the marble as I am not going for GL. I wind up keeping that barb city that was blocking access to Mao's ports, as it is in a pretty decent position. I want to claim the site with the sugar south of that, but Mao rushes in and takes it, so I go for the crappy eastern gold/clams city instead. Not only that, but before the monument is even finished in the captured barb city, he moves a GS in there and, I'm pretty sure, creates an academy. So I am struggling to overcome his culture down there when...

I found Hinduism in Orleans. I figure since everyone has copper for Suptas and only I have marble, or will soon when a border pops, Hinduism is slightly better because of the Mandirs being harder for my rivals to build. I make Mao my first convert with the free missionary, because we will have border tension soon, and wind up not having to build more than one until right before 400 AD because it spreads FAST. Willem still hasn't gotten it, but maybe that's a good thing. Caesar is probably itching to DOW someone, and if he likes Willem less than everyone else, so much the better. Willem is pulling away from the other two in tech, which is fine, because he has high WFYABTA tolerance. But he can still declare at pleased, if unlikely to, so I'd like him and Rome to go at it. Mao is technologically backwards, so I am less worried about bumping him down a notch.

I eventually self research Monotheism and compass (trade routes FTW) and get Monarchy and Construction in trade. Willem is holding on to CoL with an iron fist because he has a monopoly, which sucks cause I was hoping to grab it from him to start the lib race, but I have another plan. You'll see in my save I am researching Music. The plan is to grab the free artist from music (I think I will win), while building a handful of temples in larger cities and then a Mandir somewhere when music finishes. Use free GA to start golden age, revolt to pacifism and run three priests in that city. The shrine will be super profitable because it won't be too long before everyone is Hindu. Ride that wave to liberalism and then pick a victory type. I think they are all still on the table except cultural. I'm running HR, Slavery and Organized Religion. Costs are minimal due to Napoleon being organized.

EDIT: adding screenies. Also something I forgot to mention: Willem is running away in EPs because he has had a monopoly on CoL for a long time. He stole Monotheism and I caught one of his spies before he could do anything. Would stationing a spy in the gold/clam blocking city increase the odds of catching his infiltrators? I've never been clear on this.

You can see from the diplo glance screen that the continent is basically a tepid love-fest, but everyone on it can declare at pleased so that doesn't mean much. The coolest relationship is that between Julius and Willem. Them going to war with each other would be the best possible thing to happen in this game. As you can see Willem is the commerce leader and Julius is the Production/power leader. I don't know why Mao is lagging behind so much; he has great land.

Sorry about no BUG. I had to uninstall it from custom assest to try BetterAI. Its hard to play without it once you get used to it. I did remember to check for WHEOOHRN periodically and as far as I can tell no one ever did.

 

[Teelman]

@izmire

Can you post some more pictures of your empire/techs/relation screens?

 

[Gumbolt]

Not done my save yet but will give it a bash tomorrow or Thursday. I would like to do something interesting but no idea what everyone else has done.

Could be an interesting round set.